Raspberry Pi 4 for sale or for a donation, anyone?

Sun 13 Feb 2022, 11:39 (last edited on Sun 13 Feb 2022, 11:40)

Hi Malcolm,

I don't think that the hp elite desk will do 4K at 60Hz just 30Hz ( they are about £250). Also you have to consider it's not just about the GPU maintaining the refresh rate, the core system needs enough grunt and buffering to maintain the throughput of the encrypted video stream. When you start to do such things as 4K over Wi-Fi the bandwidth and throughput of the router is another big factor you would need 5GHz band (300Mbps). The other thing to consider is that there is virtually no 4k media that is not DRM protected. There may be some youtube streams that are "free" but I guessing that this is not cause enough for building a media server. Plex is ok storing backups from DVD (720p or 1020p) into a hard disc libraries or recording terrestrial TV via a set of tuners (hdhomerun for ripping), but an seems unjustified time investment when there are cheaper dedicated recorders out there ( with Plex you can copy the files off, with other dedicated equipment you can not, by law).

USB4 is just a USB micro C connector form factor it still runs at USB3.2 channel speed which is 10Gbits per channel but does support dual channel, this give 4.8G Bytes per second throughput. You would need a monster PC to shift that data around! ( big RAM and fast SSD). So having a USB4 on a limited PC would serve little purpose as the choke point would be the CPU/RAM/bus design of the PC.

With regards to trying to pihole the tracking data, it becomes increasing difficult now as many behemoths like Google circumvent the DNS lookup and have IP address lists baked into their phone/devices Operating Systems Services.

If you are consuming netflix, now, britbox, prime video, iplayer services it would be much more straightforward to get a dedicated media streamer or a capable smart TV. 4K only ever helps on 28 inch screens and larger depending on the viewing distance. Sometimes you are better off with say a 32 inch HD TV with a good upscale ( the play station 4 pro upscales very well on HD screens). Even though I dislike Samsung nearly as much as Google and Apple their Tizen based TV are good for streaming services ( and yes they send a lot of tracking data). Stay away from android based streaming devices.

https://www.techradar.com/best/webos-vs-tizen-vs-roku-vs-android-tv

ebay elite desk

https://gpurepublic.com/best-gpu-for-plex-video-transcoding/